Question: do you use human guniiea pigs

  1. It takes many years to get from an idea for a new drug to testing it on humans. first you test it on cells in culture dishes. then on animals. If the results of the animal experiments go very very well and doesnt appear to have any side effects you may get funding for a phase I clinical trial. This is usually only a small test, starting with low doses to test if it makes them sick. If it again shows promise as a treatment you can progress to a phase II and then finally a phase III trial which must meet certain saftey requirement before going to the public

    I have never been involved in clinical trials.

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  2. Australia has one of the strictest safety & ethics rules in the world. We have to undergo a massive paper-work + compulsory workshop even when we want to work on mice or rats…
    The simplest way to directly involve a human in clinical trials is using yourself as a model organism. I am strictly not recommending this – never try this at home but there had been some super enthusiastic (or crazy) scientists who tried various experiments on themselves – some did go wrong and some did go well.
    I remember an American scientist did an experiment on Arthritis on himself. He tested the relationship between Arthritis and knuckle-cracking. He cracked his knuckles on his left hand but not right hand for 60 years and showed that knuckle-cracking has no contribution in Arthritis. So he used himself as the human guineaa pig and took the risk of developing arthritis which is really painful :)) He was awarded ig Novel prize for this research 😀

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  3. I think Miranda and Yagiz have answered this pretty well. Another example of when a scientist used themselves for research was Barry Marshall, a scientist in Perth who discovered that a bacteria called Helicobacter pylori could cause stomach ulcers. This has hard for people to believe at the time because the stomach is so acidic it would thought nothing could live there. So Barry ingested the bacteria himself to show it could cause ulcers. Just like in Yagiz’s example Barry was awarded a nobel prize. But he was also sick for a while when he did this. So while this was part of an important discovery DO NOT TRY EXPERIMENTS ON YOURSELF!

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  4. I do use human samples in my research, but I don’t perform experiments on people. The two things are very different. I have patients who donate their cells to our research, and I can perform experiments on the cells. But I don’t do anything to the patients other than take their blood.

    As Yagiz mentioned, there are a lot of rules which surround research using humans or animals. Even performing my experiments on cells outside of the body are strictly regulated and approved.

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  5. My fellow scientists have provided great answers already. Like Katelin, research in my lab is often conducted on cells from patients. However, strict ethics guidelines always apply, and the doctors collecting the samples always have to explain to the patients what their cells are being used for and get their signature on a consent form (like your parent’s signature on a permission slip when you go on field trips). My lab is also involved in clinical trials, and we often get cells from patients who are on particular trials. The trials are always carefully monitored by ethics committees who approve (or disapprove) the trial.

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